Obsessive Hours at the Topos of Reality

An intimate confession of Antoinetta Angelidi to Rea Walldén, and to the world. A film essay on Angelidi’s gaze and life, her visions and films, and the devastating experience of going blind. Angelidi has been a pioneer of feminist avant-garde cinema in Greece since the 1970s, and has a distinctively personal style. The title of the present film combines fragments from the titles of her four feature-length films and connects them with the living experience and process of creation: “obsessive hours” of daily creativity “at the topos (place) of reality”, inside and outside film. The film’s roots run deep into a life of art creation, but also into her life-long creative collaboration with her daughter, Walldén. It is a testament, offering visions, dreams and traumatic memories, along with the wisdom of a lifetime. The question of Angelidi’s gaze gains a tragic tonality through her experience of losing her (literal) sight. The film’s concept was formed during the lock-down, which forced on us a kind of imprisonment, along with the inescapable and threatening intrusion of outside reality. “Obsessive hours at the topos of reality” names this peculiar condition too. It is a film made inside a flat, and it is about our inner space, at the most secret place of which one finds the Other.

• Writers: Antoinetta Angelidi, Rea Walldén
• Cinematographer / DOP: Rea Walldén
• Editor: Rea Walldén